A New Favorite Grocery Shopping Story

[image: mbeans.com]

Last month, my mother, niece, and nephew brought me to the grocery store for the first time in over eight weeks. (I'm still recovering from the moped accident and brain injury, and up until now, have been receiving grocery deliveries from others. So getting to go along was a BIG DEAL.) I have never had so much fun grocery shopping.

So many things about it were delightful; I don't even know where to start...

I'm still smiling about my one-year-old nephew's evident belief that we were doing this all FOR him. He displayed his jubilation and expectation with grunts, yells, arm-waving, and leg-kicking every time we put something in the cart. Quite the show, and he didn't lose a bit of enthusiasm throughout the store.

I haven't yet stopped teasing my mom about caving to my two-year-old niece's constant suggestions throughout the store. "Grammy, don't you think we should get a treat? Grammy, don't you think we should buy a ball to play with? Grammy, don't you think we should buy some macaroni and cheese?" The first time I saw Grammy turn her down was when she brought a clock (I know, a clock? In a grocery store?) she'd found down an aisle somewhere. Had the clock been made of chocolate, I think it would have ended differently...

We made our way so, so slowly through the store, and I loved it. (I was a pretty slow person before this brain injury, and now I just have a great excuse.) I chuckled later to realize that my niece and I had constantly walked right in front of people throughout the whole store, though for different reasons. She was lost in her imaginative chatter (and occasional suggestions to Grammy), while I've grown accustomed to wearing my hat pulled down low in bright environments and sometimes miss things peripherally as a result.

But the best part, the cherry on top, was the woman who came up to me as I was waiting at the checkout. Pointing to my niece's hair, she said, "Wow, her hair is so blond it's almost white. MY daughter's hair was like that when she was a little girl..."

I agreed that her hair is white-blond, to which the woman responded with several more assurances that her daughter's hair had, indeed, been so blond it could be mistaken for white. (Apparently, having a small child with you is an invitation for people to conduct random conversations with you in public places.)

I'd almost stopped listening when she ended with this gem: "And you know what was the strangest thing about it?" She paused dramatically, and then continued in a hushed voice. "When it was wet, it smelled like chicken feathers."

I say, every once in a while, you just need a story that ends up being about chicken feathers.